The archived blog of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

Dec 14, 2011

POGO Senior Writer Beth Schulman recently caught up with Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig to talk about the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements, campaign finance, and the nature of corruption. Lessig is the author of Republic, Lost, one of the books on our list of 10 books that matter for 2011.

POGO: It seems like Occupy and Tea Party demonstrators confirm your sense that there is trans-partisan outrage the influence of money in politics. Can these movements find common ground in this issue?

Lessig: I do think they will get it, if it is pressed in the right way. Not sure yet what way is that right way, but I am struggling with working it out.

Lessig: Only if it mixes MORE with LESS. We need limits on independent expenditures to be sure. But we also need public funding. If we got both (in the right form), the revolving door would not be as big of an issue.

POGO: Do you believe that campaign finance reform could address the problem of contractors being “too big too fail”? It often seems like contractors—particularly those under the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security—can count on a steady stream of government deals no matter how much misconduct surrounds their work.

A Project On Government Oversight and Center for Responsive Politics Investigation

By BEN FREEMAN, ROBERT MAGUIRE, and NICK SCHWELLENBACH

It's the steal of the century. For the price of buying a condo in Washington, DC, you can support the political campaigns of Members of Congress who support your trillion-dollar program. Talk about return on investment!

On November 9, Reps. Kay Granger (R-TX) and Norm Dicks (D-WA) announced the formation of a Congressional Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Caucus that they are co-chairing. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive program in Pentagon history, and it has been plagued by delays, cost overruns and defects that have raised eyebrows at the Pentagon and in Congress (the latest official report on JSF problems was made public by POGO yesterday). As of its announcement, the JSF Caucus had 48 Members of the House on its roster.

According to Granger and Dicks’ press release, the Caucus will “provide members of Congress accurate and timely information on the development, testing and deployment of our next-generation fighter.” The announcement quickly dispels any notion of the group’s objectivity, noting that “the Joint Strike Fighter program is an absolute necessity.” The rhetoric emanating from these Members of Congress shouldn’t be surprising given their ties to the companies benefitting from the billions of taxpayer dollars spent yearly on the JSF.

JSF Contractor Contributions Flow to Members of the JSF Caucus

The primary contractors building the JSF—Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Pratt & Whitney—have contributed $326,400 to Members of the JSF Caucus in the first year of the 2012 election cycle, according to a joint analysis of campaign finance data by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). These firms’ political action committees (PACs), which distribute campaign contributions to promote the contractors’ political goals, gave the average Member of the JSF Caucus $6,094—nearly double what they gave to the average representative not in the caucus ($3,077).

Oct 06, 2011

By BEN FREEMAN, LYDIA DENNETT, and DAHNA BLACK

Every year foreign governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lobbying and public relations firms to increase their influence in the United States. Lobbyists working on behalf of these foreign governments (foreign lobbyists) contact policymakers thousands of times annually, and the members of the “Super Committee” are no exception. Through lobbyists, foreign governments safeguard their interests in Washington. This is critically important now as some of the proposals currently being considered, such as cuts to foreign aid and U.S. subsidies to the security of foreign nations, would affect foreign interests. Foreign lobbyists have taken note and are already beginning their efforts to shape the work of the Super Committee.

For instance, lobbyists for South Korea have muscled in on Super Committee action. The top foreign lobbying firm in the U.S., Patton Boggs, LLP, was hired in February 2010 on behalf of both the non-profit Korean International Trade Association and the Embassy of South Korea to advocate for passage of the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement. They targeted committee co-chair Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) in a September 14, 2011 letter at least partly on the basis of her work on the Super Committee. The letter from Patton Boggs’ senior partner Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr., to Murray states:

Ambassador Han would like to discuss the status of the pending US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), including in the context of the ongoing deficit reduction discussions in which you play a crucial role…The Ambassador is anxious to discuss these matters, as well as to update you on KORUS's benefits for the United States, particularly the State of Washington.

Senator Murray’s office confirmed that her office met with lobbysts with Patton Boggs on September 29, according to an article by Janie Lorber of Roll Call. Lorber noted that the Super Committee “itself is not expected to address the pending deals in its budget reduction proposal, but Murray, who has supported past free-trade deals, could have access to information about how the timing of the debt deliberations could affect passage of the free-trade agreements.”

Foreign Lobbyists Have Lobbied Current Super Committee Members in the Past

Murray’s meeting with foreign lobbyists is not unique: in the past year, all twelve members of the Super Committee have been contacted by at least one foreign lobbyist. Over that same period, all but two members, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), have received campaign contributions from foreign lobbyists, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records.

Aug 10, 2011

By BEN FREEMAN

In a critical--though unheralded--decision to protect the sanctity of the U.S. political process, a DC district court on Monday granted the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) motion to dismiss a case that, combined with the Citizens United ruling, would have allowed foreigners to pump unlimited amounts of money into U.S. elections.

The plaintiffs, Benjamin Bluman and Asenath Steiman, both foreign nationals living in New York City, have been fighting for nearly a year to overturn the FEC prohibition against foreign national election contributions, as laid out in Section 441e of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). They relied largely upon the Citizens United case to argue that the prohibition violates their freedom of speech.

But, the court found that precedents set forth “a straightforward principle: It is fundamental to the definition of our national political community that foreign citizens do not have a constitutional right to participate in, and thus may be excluded from, activities of democratic self-government.” And, “Spending money to contribute to a candidate or party or to expressly advocate for or against the election of a political candidate is participating in the process of democratic self-government.”

The court’s decision does not prohibit temporary residents from engaging in issue advocacy or speaking out on public policies— it simply does not allow them to do so with money. And, as the court notes in its decision, “plaintiffs’ home countries—Israel and Canada—and many other democratic countries impose similar restraints on political spending by foreign citizens.”

The plaintiffs, nonetheless, told Politico that they will appeal the decision directly to the Supreme Court. Thus, the battle to protect U.S. sovereignty will now go to the institution that declared money is speech in the Citizens United case. Hopefully, this time around the high court will rule in favor of democracy.